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Red Meat Blues

By Frank Bruni March 22, 2012 12:54 pmMarch 22, 2012 12:54 pm

A question that I’m constantly asked by people who know that I spent more than five years as The Times’s restaurant critic is what my most memorable meal was. It’s impossible to single one out. But a dozen or so experiences indeed eclipsed the others, and they included an evening at Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, a Manhattan restaurant that has since closed. I recall the night so vividly because it was such an insanely over-the-top paean to the farthest reaches of fatty excess.

As it happens I dined there with the man who would succeed me in the critic’s job, Sam Sifton. And what we shared, once we had finished our martinis and white wine and had moved on to a bottle of red, was a côte de boeuf that easily weighed more than two pounds, had been basted in butter and was sliced in a fashion that allowed the interlacing of broad, glassy ribbons of seared foie gras between the thick, glistening dominoes of beef. To some of you, this may sound revolting in its bloat; to me, it was pure heaven. I remember thinking, “If I could get away with eating like this every night, I would.”

Justin Maxon/The New York Times

I can no longer get away with eating like that even a few times a month, and in fact haven’t eaten like that in a while. It’s unclear whether I’ll ever eat like that again. About four and a half months ago I was given a diagnosis of gout, whose triggers are believed to include a surfeit of alcohol, a plenitude of red meat and any and all organ meat, the category into which foie gras, which is liver, most definitely falls. My Ducasse meal amounts to a perfect storm of dietary no-no’s, a long swim in the Bermuda Triangle of gout, and a replica of it might land me in excruciating pain — and put me out of commission, in terms of my ability to walk — for 48 hours. I can’t risk it.

Last week there was renewed and heightened alarm over the health effects of too much red meat — of any red meat, really.A report that received much panicked attention posited that even three-ounce servings of beef, lamb and the like could increase the risks of heart disease and cancer and decrease a person’s life span. This report coincided with fresh revelations about what sometimes goes into the ground beef sold in supermarkets and restaurants: connective tissue, ammonia. “Pink slime,” the stuff is called. The descriptions and some of the pictures of it were ghastly.

And I heard more acquaintances than usual talking with more fervor than they typically do about their determination to edit most or much of the red meat out of their lives. How hard, they wondered, would that be? And how disappointing?

Well, I can offer a report from the front lines of carnivorous cutback, and from a person to whom meat, glorious meat, wasn’t just one of the food groups (in collaboration with dairy) but the grand emperor of them all, more commanding, more regal, more deserving of — I don’t know — half of my caloric intake on a normal day? Two-thirds on a special one? It’s a family thing. When my father, my siblings and I grill steaks, it’s sometimes a porterhouse per person. When we sit down to a big breakfast, we go through strips of bacon as if they were so many shoestring fries.

In early November I was told to stop this. And to drink much, much less. And, while I was at it, to severely limit shrimp, scallops, salmon and other fatty fish to boot. You want a list of my favorite foods? Go to any Web site that instructs the gout sufferer about what to beware of. Almost all of them are there.

A cruel joke, this. But also an interesting test: just how attached, really, are we to the components of our diet that we think we can’t live happily without? Just how endurable is their banishment? Thanks to gout, I’ve been finding out.

Andrew Burton for The New York Times

I should say a few words about this ailment, sometimes referred to as “the disease of kings” because an indolent glutton with a lavish budget for culinary delicacies is likely to be partaking of all the gout triggers — and with some frequency at that. Gout afflicts more than 6 million Americans, according to some estimates, and it manifests as inflammation around certain joints and tendons — the big toes are a favorite stamping ground, though my left heel has played gout host as well — and causes those areas to become excruciatingly tender in a way that lends entirely new meaning to the adjective. Sometimes, burning and stabbing sensations join the party, too. The inflammation usually isn’t constant, but rather a series of sporadic flare-ups, and severe ones are “more painful than childbirth,” my doctor told me when he gave me the diagnosis, turning to childbirth as an agony metric the way oncologists turn to nuts and fruits to chart tumor size. All I know is that when gout pays a visit to one of my feet, I can’t stand on it or put a sock on it or even place a thin sheet over it; pretty much all I can do is stare at it, swear at it and bang my fist on the nearest hard surface while waiting for the industrial-strength anti-inflammatories my doctor has prescribed to kick in.

Daniel Krieger for The New York TimesFoie Gras from Per Se.

From what I’ve read and what he and other experts have told me, a person may or may not be predisposed to gout, and I clearly was. Since my early 20s, doctors who gave me the results of routine blood work-ups would say: “You have a tendency toward gout.” They seldom said more and I didn’t ask questions, though I’m not sure why. But I now know that what they meant was that my uric acid levels were naturally higher than the norm or the ideal.

These levels apparently climbed higher over time, though whether this was the cumulative result of a meat-heavy, fatty diet and of a vigorous enjoyment of spirits isn’t entirely certain. One gout expert I interviewed told me that gout triggers are relevant and consequential only in real time, once flare-ups have begun, while another specialist told me that a predisposition to gout could be exacerbated over the years by regular consumption of those triggers. Either way, once you get your diagnosis, the triggers can be trouble. If you’re lucky and certain medications work well, you can still enjoy these foods to some extent and still drink, though you’re advised to do so more moderately than before. If you’re not lucky and the medications don’t work all that well, your dietary reform must be more exacting and thorough.

My degree of luck isn’t clear yet. My gout adventure is too young. I’ve had red meat since my diagnosis, but probably not more than 16 ounces in any one week. I’ve had about eight shrimp in all. I’ve had wine and even some bourbon, but while it used to be customary for me to down at least two alcoholic beverages on six out of seven nights, I’ll now frequently go four to five days without a drop.

I wasn’t at all sure I could manage that part of my new regimen in particular, not because of any chemical dependency on alcohol but because of its centrality to so many social occasions and celebrations in my life. Not long after my gout was diagnosed, I headed to Southern California with the rest of the Bruni clan to celebrate Christmas at my younger brother’s house, where he has an actual wine cellar. On Christmas Eve we go through numerous bottles, usually after early-evening martinis, the shaking and making of which are like a starter’s gun: the revelry has begun! It’s off to the races!

This Christmas I sat out the martinis and then the wine. And while I missed both, especially the rush of that first blast of cold gin, I wasn’t morose and I wasn’t mum (I seldom am) and I felt just as effervescently happy to be surrounded by my nieces and nephews as I had when viewing them through cabernet-colored glasses. The next morning I had a clearer head and springier step. I liked both.

Cutting back on booze has been much easier than I expected, in part because I’ve noticed, and relished, deeper, less fitful sleep. The hardest part, in fact, has been not ordering a cocktail or wine, because I know how crucial alcohol is to a restaurant’s profit and to a server’s income, and I worry that I and my San Pellegrino (or, worse, my free tap water) are taking up valuable dining-room real estate and server time and patience. So I sometimes ask and pay for a cocktail or glass of wine and then just leave it be, as if it were merely an ornament, which it in fact becomes.

Even as I surprised myself with my adherence (minus a few lapses) to a lighter-drinking life, I worried about backsliding when it came to red meat and offal. I eat out maybe four nights a week, and many of the restaurants I visit pride themselves on their charcuterie, their salumi. Friends will frequently order a plate of cured meats as a snack for the whole table. Or they’ll order duck liver or chicken liver mousse, also to be shared. I’ve had to regard these treats, too, as ornamental, and I’ve had to content myself with the bread basket. I’ve become very, very chummy with the bread basket.

You never really quite appreciate just what a cornucopia of food alternatives exists until a few are cut off.

Grains and nuts have been my salvation, because fruits and vegetables never did do an adequate job of filling me up. I’m more grateful than ever for the Italian leaning of so many kitchens and chefs these days: it raises the likelihood that menus will have pasta options. Even if these options aren’t intended as main courses, they work perfectly well that way. Pasta dishes are a godsend for an additional reason: they often incorporate some red meat, but not a crazy amount. So they let a meat lover like me get flavors he or she cherishes in a lower-risk way.

You never really quite appreciate just what a cornucopia of food alternatives exists — just how many culinary directions you can set off in — until a few are cut off and you’re forced to re-route yourself. That’s a lesson that people with celiac disease and with diabetes have learned. It’s what vegetarians have long asserted. And it’s what gout is teaching me. In diet books, the word “substitution” comes across as some pathetic euphemism for “sacrifice” and “compromise,” a positive-spin noun born of negative circumstances. But substitution is indeed a plausible course, and not necessarily a punitive one. At breakfast, oatmeal thickened with a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter can provide the same wicked indulgence that pork sausage does. At dinnertime, chicken prepared with care and ingenuity can go a long way toward replacing lamb, and the right kind of omelet can be wholly satisfying.

I can still have queso fundido — and did, repeatedly, on a quick trip to Austin, Tex., last month. The world of cheese alone is so varied as to be almost infinite, and when you’re veering away from many meats and some fish, you have more appetite and room to travel its byways. I indeed veer rather than outright avoid, especially of late. I permitted myself some brisket at a legendary barbecue place in the Texas hill country near Austin. I chanced some goat recently at Sueños, a restaurant in Chelsea that does a terrific job with it. But I stagger these experiences, none of which come close to the Ducasse decadence. I’m cautious.

And I’ve noticed discernible changes in my health — or at least in the way I feel. How much of that is attributable to my reduced alcohol intake and how much to the exodus of red meat is impossible to say. I haven’t lost more than a pound or two, because carbs have rushed in where protein isn’t permitted to tread as heavily as before. But I don’t feel the leadenness at the conclusion of meals that I often did in the past. Day in and day out, I’m more alert and have better energy. My workouts have improved.

There are times, crazily, when I’m almost happy about the gout, the flare-ups of which are subtle now that I’m medicated and reformed. It provided a dietary shove where the gentle pushes of a vague desire for self-improvement hadn’t sufficed. I always sort-of meant to kind-of get around to paring down the meat in my meals, and I always sort-of meant to kind-of get around to decreasing my drinking. But it wouldn’t happen. I lacked the proper motivation. Illness and the threat of extreme pain have provided it.

Why must it take something like that for so many of us to pivot in a healthier direction? My pivot hasn’t been as joyless as I’d feared. Old hankerings fade; new pleasures dawn. Don’t get me wrong: I still see that grand masterwork of meat that Sam and I shared many years ago as the very summit of epicurean bliss. And I wish I didn’t have to gaze longingly at it from base camp. But I’m sufficiently content here.

In your own quest to cut back on meat in general or red meat in particular or something else in your diet, what has hindered you, what has helped, and what have the results been? We could all use the counsel and encouragement.

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About Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni has been an Op-Ed columnist for The Times since June 2011. Before then, he was the newspaper’s restaurant critic, wallowing in sushi and pseudonyms; as its Rome bureau chief, he kept tabs on an ailing pope (John Paul II) and a flailing prime minister (Silvio Berlusconi). He has been a White House correspondent and, for The Detroit Free Press, a movie critic. Many of those experiences are captured in his best-selling memoir, “Born Round” (2009).

This blog harnesses his diverse interests and invites you into a discussion with him. As Frank weighs in on news, culture and a whole lot else, sharing quick thoughts and riper reflections, you’re encouraged to do the same. More about Frank Bruni »

Moderating your missives and helping with this blog is Lindsay Crouse, an editorial assistant for the Op-Ed section. The more civil and on-point your comments and feedback are, the faster she can speed them into this space.

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My 2009 memoir tells the story of my exuberant, obsessive and sometimes debilitating relationship with food, from childhood through five years of professional eating. It's a spirited look at the loving, feasting ways of a big Italian-American family and one glutton's search for self-acceptance.